PBS' 'Cool Spaces' delves deep into architecture

Seattle’s Central Library will be featured in a “Cool Spaces” episode on libraries.

Great television about architecture is about as rare as great television about art, which is to say it's been a very long time. But a new fast-paced, beautiful-to-look-at series, "Cool Spaces: The Best New Architecture," premiering on PBS in April promises to take us deep inside the process of building some of America's most advanced buildings.

I got a chance to preview the premiere episode about performance spaces, featuring the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Mo., and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, home to the Brooklyn Nets.

The host of the lively show is Stephen Chung, who has snagged interviews not only with top architects such as Frank Gehry but also critical players such as the Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones. Chung, who describes himself as an architect and a teacher, has an incredibly approachable style and is as at home discussing sports trivia as he is tensile strengths.

In Dallas, Jones wanted to preserve the rectangular opening of the Cowboys' former stadium while creating a place that felt more like the Ritz. Chung shows us the results, the luxury boxes, the seven story-tall doors, the massive screen that stretches from one 20-yard line to the other, the underground tunnels, the site-specific art program and spaces subtly cast in the shape of a football.

In Kansas City, we discover how a curvy, sculptural performing arts center, effectively three nested structures, came to be. The precast concrete forms draped in stainless steel are beautifully animated by time-lapse photography, and I loved some of the little practical details, such as the snow guards, little dimples in the surface of the structures that keep snow from sliding in large chunks and also create a glinting effect.

In Brooklyn, Chung explores how the muscular form of the Barclays Center was a response to a tough, triangular site and a busy, urban intersection. Its skin of weathered steel panels gives the structure a post-industrial grit that is unlike anything around, and yet the place is open and transparent, offering views from the street down to the Nets' practice court, for instance.

Because each hourlong "Cool Spaces" features three buildings with similar programmatic needs — performance spaces, healing spaces, art spaces, for instance — we are able to contrast the design solutions of different architects, all of whom are at the top of their game. At least in the case of the first episode, their approaches varied significantly.

The show, which will air four episodes in the spring and another four in the fall, is sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and is likely to appeal to a broad audience as well as those in the field. The photography, so critical to a show this visual in nature, is quite good.

My only quibble with the show is that it feels a bit boosterish. Sure, the focus is on fabulous buildings, but every major project has its quirks, criticisms and controversies, and those should be part of the drama of these stories, too.

Air dates and times for "Cool Spaces" on local PBS stations are not yet available. Check local listings in April, when the show is slated to premiere.

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. Follow her coverage on Twitter (@artcity), Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Instagram (marylouises). Email her at mschumacher@journalsentinel.com.

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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